The Keeper of the Door eBook

THE LESSON

“Then he’s such a prig!” said Olga.

“You should never use a word you can’t
define,” observed Nick, from the depths of the
hammock in which his meagre person reposed at length.

She made a face at him, and gave the hammock a vicious
twitch which caused him to rock with some violence
for several seconds. As he was wont pathetically
to remark, everyone bullied him because he was small
and possessed only one arm, having shed the other by
inadvertence somewhere on the borders of the Indian
Empire.

Certainly Olga—­his half-brother’s
eldest child—­treated him with scant respect,
though she never allowed anyone else to be other than
polite to him in her hearing. But then she and
Nick had been pals from the beginning of things, and
this surely entitled her to a certain licence in her
dealings with him. Nick, too, was such a darling;
he never minded anything.

Having duly punished him for snubbing her, she returned
with serenity to the work upon her lap.

“You see,” she remarked thoughtfully,
“the worst of it is he really is a bit of a
genius. And one can’t sit on genius—­with
comfort. It sort of flames out where you least
expect it.”

“Highly unpleasant, I should think,” agreed
Nick.

“Yes; and he has such a disgusting fashion of
behaving as if—­as if one were miles beneath
his notice,” proceeded Olga. “And
I’m not a chicken, you know, Nick, I’m
twenty.”

“A vast age!” said Nick.

For which remark she gave him another jerk which set
him swinging like a pendulum.

“Well, I’ve got a little sense anyhow,”
she remarked.

“But not much,” said Nick. “Or
you would know that that sort of treatment after muffins
for tea is calculated to produce indigestion in a
very acute form, peculiarly distressing to the beholder.”

“Oh, I’m sorry! I forgot the muffins.”
Olga laid a restraining hand upon the hammock.
“But do you like him, Nick? Honestly now!”

“My dear child, I never like anyone till I’ve
seen him at his worst. Drawing-room manners never
attract me.”

“But this man hasn’t got any manners at
all,” objected Olga. “And he’s
so horribly satirical. It’s like having
a stinging-nettle in the house. I believe—­just
because he’s clever in his own line—­that
he’s been spoilt. As if everybody couldn’t
do something!”

“Ah! That’s the point,” said
Nick sententiously. “Everybody can, but
it isn’t everybody who does. Now this young
man apparently knows how to make the most of his opportunities.
He plays a rattling hand at bridge, by the way.”